That's fair I guess. But I'd like to know more about direct competition anyway, as I believe that most of reviewers out there know, that UI bugs are something common among new DAP-s, and most of them will be solved with next FW's. SQ won't change.

I am happy enough with my DX50 that I have not been using my DX100 or Tera-Player. The DX50 responds to the nuances of any of my phones and scales very well with my best phones and IEM's.
The Random play mode is the best algorithm of any that I have had on previous players. I have had minimal bugs since v 1.1.6 and am very pleased with what iBasso has done with the firmware so far.

I have yet to feel the need for an external amplifier.Edited by HiFlight - 9/22/13 at 5:42pm

Ordered 4th batch DX50. Instead of just dropping "Ordered" in a post, I wanted to give you my backstory.

Done all my reading a prep work.

I just bought a 64G micro SD card from Best Buy. They matched the amazon price of 47.09. So I'm covered with the uSD card.

I downloaded MP3Tag to see how my FLAC are tagged. Tagging looks ok. However... My embedded images are large. most are about 800x800. I know there was some talk about having to make them all 495 or less. Is that confirmed? Do we have to make the images smaller than 500? I would like to hear some experiences from the peanut gallery. (No. I don't remember the peanut gallery, but I sure as heck do remember corduroy!)

The reason I'm adventuring into the DX50 is because I recently started ripping FLAC and listening to them through amp'd and balanced ipod>Intruder>RS1i.

The jump to balanced blew me away. I believe it is more than the extra dB increase you get by going balanced. Let's just say I loved it. Had it done by Drew and his team at Moon Audio. While I was there, I was asking a bunch of questions, etc, and he said I needed to jump on FLAC. I said, I only have an iPod touch and hate proprietary, so I do everything mp3 320. He said to get the Flac Player App from the app store. I did that, and POW. Second lightning strike in a week. First thing I did was download a Black Crowes concert I attended a few weeks earlier. Needless to say, I was loving it, and have been ripping discs (again) since then. But the touch 64g is filling up quick. So I have been thinking about my next step. New iPod for just FLAC? Another touch? Rockbox a Classic? Hifiman 901? (too much, too buggy). x3 was on the list as soon as I saw it. Then I found the other dx50 thread, and then this bullet train thread launched and the bug thread. Hopefully I know what I've got in store in everything but sound.

Ordered 4th batch DX50. Instead of just dropping "Ordered" in a post, I wanted to give you my backstory.

Done all my reading a prep work.

I just bought a 64G micro SD card from Best Buy. They matched the amazon price of 47.09. So I'm covered with the uSD card.

I downloaded MP3Tag to see how my FLAC are tagged. Tagging looks ok. However... My embedded images are large. most are about 800x800. I know there was some talk about having to make them all 495 or less. Is that confirmed? Do we have to make the images smaller than 500? I would like to hear some experiences from the peanut gallery. (No. I don't remember the peanut gallery, but I sure as heck do remember corduroy!)

The reason I'm adventuring into the DX50 is because I recently started ripping FLAC and listening to them through amp'd and balanced ipod>Intruder>RS1i.

The jump to balanced blew me away. I believe it is more than the extra dB increase you get by going balanced. Let's just say I loved it. Had it done by Drew and his team at Moon Audio. While I was there, I was asking a bunch of questions, etc, and he said I needed to jump on FLAC. I said, I only have an iPod touch and hate proprietary, so I do everything mp3 320. He said to get the Flac Player App from the app store. I did that, and POW. Second lightning strike in a week. First thing I did was download a Black Crowes concert I attended a few weeks earlier. Needless to say, I was loving it, and have been ripping discs (again) since then. But the touch 64g is filling up quick. So I have been thinking about my next step. New iPod for just FLAC? Another touch? Rockbox a Classic? Hifiman 901? (too much, too buggy). x3 was on the list as soon as I saw it. Then I found the other dx50 thread, and then this bullet train thread launched and the bug thread. Hopefully I know what I've got in store in everything but sound.

I have the same issue - haven't figured out the pattern yet. Somewhat annoying - it would be nice to go back to the last track that played.

I think the pattern be that it remembers the last track that you played before you shutdown the device manually. If it shut down automatically, it does not remember the last track before it shutdown. It goes back to the track that you last played when you deliberately turned off the device. Maybe someone else can test this out on their device to make sure.

To my ears the dx50 is the better player and my ak100 sounds better than the stock ak100. I do not find the highs on the dx50 harsh but they were on the unmodified ak100.

I find the treble on the stock AK harsh with some pairings. For instance, it is way too bright with the Grado GR10s. This goes back to the output impedance issue, and this is one of the reason people have gone with the modded AK100. The GR10s definitely sound better on the DX50! With other pairings, I prefer the AK because of its clarity. The DX sounds a bit murky to me and at times the different ranges tend to blend together and sound too much alike. IMHO.

I find the treble on the stock AK harsh with some pairings. For instance, it is way too bright with the Grado GR10s. This goes back to the output impedance issue, and this is one of the reason people have gone with the modded AK100. The GR10s definitely sound better on the DX50! With other pairings, I prefer the AK because of its clarity. The DX sounds a bit murky to me and at times the different ranges tend to blend together and sound too much alike. IMHO.

Try turning down the 30hz band on the DX50 EQ (-6). It cleared up a lot after that for me.

have you guys noticed that in the internal storage there is a folder that stores all the album art for the albums? :D it was a good 100+MB for me and you might want to look out in the case you feel the memory at its fullest - there might be little to no place for this folder to go and the DX50 will start acting strange. Mine does - it tries to clear some of the internal memory by deleting the files on it :| I **** you not, first I thought it was a Faulty USB Cable, but I'm now pretty sure that's not the only cause mine acted up...

have you guys noticed that in the internal storage there is a folder that stores all the album art for the albums? it was a good 100+MB for me and you might want to look out in the case you feel the memory at its fullest - there might be little to no place for this folder to go and the DX50 will start acting strange. Mine does - it tries to clear some of the internal memory by deleting the files on it :| I **** you not, first I thought it was a Faulty USB Cable, but I'm now pretty sure that's not the only cause mine acted up...

I had always stayed away from using the internal storage even with my AKs as I find they are 1) slow and 2) cause more issues for db scan. Not to mention with just 8GB on dx50 I pretty much never even think of using it.